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                    Why do people insist on using PHP? Why?
                                        
You just have to love informative error messages.

One of our clients is getting the following error on a PHP [1] (of course)
driven website:

> Warning: file_exists(): open_basedir restriction in effect. File(XXXX) is
> not within the allowed path(s): (XXXX/htdocs:/tmp) in XXXX on line 531
> 

Okay, I read that as “file not found” but according to the customer, if the
file really didn't exist, she would get “file not found” instead of “File …
is not within the allowed path(s).” Which is frustrating because the file in
question does not exist!

Aaaaaarrrg!

So okay, humor the customer. Go ahead, try to do a search on “PHP File is not
within the allowed path [2]” … go ahead … I'll wait …

See the problem?

A lot of sites seem to have that problem.

Searching the PHP site doesn't seem to be helping any either.

Does anyone have a clue? It appears that PHP is refusing to search for files
past a certain depth, but I can't say for sure that is the problem, nor even
what to look for to see if this is the problem.

Sigh.

[1] http://www.php.net/
[2] http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=PHP+File+not+in+allowed+path&btnG=Google+Search

Email Sean Conner at sean@conman.org

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